Pope's sex abuse adviser seeks to keep survivor voice heard [View all]

[Heddi]

http://www.startribune.com/pope-s-sex-abuse-adviser-seeks-to-keep-survivor-voice-heard/416911074/

ROME — Pope Francis' top sex abuse adviser insisted Thursday the pope is "thoroughly committed" to ridding the church of abuse, but acknowledged his advisory commission must regroup following the clamorous resignation of Irish survivor Marie Collins.

Cardinal Sean O'Malley told a seminar on protecting children that the commission has always maintained a "victims first" priority and that the issue of continued survivor involvement in its work would be discussed at the group's plenary meeting starting Friday.

The key question facing the commission, he said, is "how can victims and survivors continue to have a powerful voice in our work and help guide us?"

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Her resignation, which followed the suspension of the only other survivor on the board, was also a blow to Francis, who has won praise for creating the commission in 2014 and voicing "zero tolerance" for pedophiles, but has earned criticism for some problematic appointments, for scrapping a proposed tribunal to judge negligent bishops and for reducing penalties against a handful of abusers.

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Parolin arrived to hear a devastating assessment of the effect that abuse has had on the credibility of the Catholic Church in Australia, where a royal commission is wrapping up a years-long investigation that found some 7 percent of priests had been accused of molesting some 4,444 children between 1980 and 2015.

"Sure, it may happen in other institutions. Sure it happens in families. But the fact that it happened in the Catholic Church says something about the corruption of the Catholic Church," said Francis Sullivan, head of the Australian bishops' council that is coordinating the church's response to the royal commission inquiry. "We have to come to terms with that cancer."